LANGUAGE DETERMINATION OPTIONS/ALGORITHM BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Voice response units ("VRUs") are well known. They allow a caller to enter and retrieve information by using the telephone keypad to respond to a voice menu. They can provide, for example, the playback of prerecorded, or voice synthesization of, successive digits in a telephone number in response to a request for directory assistance. In other instances, they may provide voice confirmation of a number entered into a remote unit by depression of the dual tone multiple frequency dialing push buttons of a telephone.

In prepaid telephone systems, VRUs are used to inform the subscriber of the time available to talk, the availability of voice mail, etc. The management of a prepaid system is generally under the control of a call processing application resident within the VRU. The call processing application, in association with peripheral equipment, determines the action to be taken (e. g., determining the correctness of a PIN entry, the prompting of users for destination numbers or desired services, outdialing to a requested telephone number, etc.) during the processing of a call request.

To facilitate the customer participation in the call processing, many prior art systems offer the customer a choice of languages in which to converse. Upon accessing the prepaid system, the caller is provided with a language selection menu.

For example, a message providing the choices of English, Turkish, and Italian may say :"For English, press 1. Turkce icin 2 basiniz. Per ascola in Italiano, premere 3". Once the customer has selected the desired language [by keypad entry, vocal response, etc. ], all further interaction is conducted in the selected language.

Other systems may define a single language to be used based on the number a caller dials to access the prepaid system or as part of the promotion of a particular prepaid product.

These prior art systems are configured for a particular language determination method and are limited to the features of that single method.

Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a novel method and system for allowing various language determination methods to exist and be configurable in a single system.

It is another object of the present invention to provide a novel method and system for determining which of various language methods to use for a particular subscriber.

It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a novel method and system for determining which of various language methods to use for a particular product/program.

These and many other objects and advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent to one skilled in the art to which the invention pertains from a perusal of the claims, the appended drawings, and the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS Figure 1 is a functional block diagram showing the basic organization of the enhanced services system of the present invention in the embodiment of a prepaid telephone system.

Figure 2 is a functional block diagram of an embodiment of the present invention showing the voice response unit (VRU) embedded within the switching platform.

Figure 3 is a flow chart illustrating a configuration process for one embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 4 is a flow chart illustrating the language determination algorithm used in processing a call for one embodiment of the present invention.

Figure 5 is a flow chart illustrating the process for determining the language used for the PIN prompt asssociated with one embodiment of the present invention.

DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS Figure 1, illustrating an enhanced services platform in the embodiment of a prepaid telephone system, shows a suitable conventional telephone switch 10 such as the Harris Corporation 20/20 switch in a conventional public switched telephone network (PSTN) connected to large numbers of subscriber telephones such as the caller telephones 12 and the called party telephones 14. Also connected to the switch 10 may be a bank of voice response units (VRUs) 15 on which the prepaid call processing application 18 resides.

Alternatively as shown in Figure 2, the VRUs 15 may be embedded within the architecture of an integrated network server (IN Server) 16 which is physically mounted on the back plane of the telephone switch 10. The embedding of the VRU in the switch platform effects seamless transfer of information and may be accomplished by means of an adaptor card with the elimination of the Tl and El circuits.

Based upon the system configuration, the call processing application determines the action to be taken during the processing of a call request. Figure 3 illustrates the configuration process/options for determining the language to be used during call processing for one embodiment of the present invention. To configure the system, the system administrator accesses the prepaid database administration program (100) and configures various tables based on the language method desired (102) : First Time Only Language, Language Determined By Routing Information, Language Menu For All Calls, or Language Defined At Program or Product Level.

With the First Time Only Language option, a language menu is provide to customers the first time they access the prepaid system. The system then associates the customer's language choice with the customer's PIN/account. For future calls, after receiving the PIN information, the prepaid system uses this"account"language to interact with the customer.

To configure the system for the First Time Only Language option, the system administrator must define the languages to be offered in the language menu at the program or product level (104), enable the"First Time Only Language"Menu option at the program or product level (106), and define the language to used for the PIN prompt (108) which will either be the DNIS (Dialed Number Information Service) language if defined, or otherwise, a language from the language menu which has been designated as the default language.

The Language Determined By Routing Information option uses routing information received by the prepaid system with the call request to determine the language to be used for customer interaction. Configuring the system for this option only requires the system administrator to define a DNIS language (110).

For the Language Menu For All Calls option, the prepaid system plays a language menu for each call request. To configure the system, the system administrator must define the languages to be offered in the language menu at the product or the program level (112). For this option, a DNIS language must not be defined.

The final configuration option illustrated in Figure 3 is the Language Defined At Program or Product Level option which requires the system administrator to define a single language at the product or program level (114). For this option, a DNIS language must not be defined.

Figure 4 illustrates the language determination algorithm used during the processing of a call for one embodiment of the present invention. When a call is received by the prepaid system, the prepaid system uses its incoming routing information to determine the product that applies to the call, and optionally, the applicable program (200). The system then determines the language to be used for the PIN prompt (202) and prompts the customer for his PIN (204). Optionally, a tone may be used instead of a PIN prompt to indicate to the customer that a PIN is to be entered. Upon receipt of the PIN, the system determines if the First Time Only Feature has been enabled for the customer (206). If the feature has not been enabled, processing of the call is continued (218). If the First Time Only Feature has been enabled and an account language has been defined (208), the system uses the account language to further process the call (210). If no account language has been defined (208), the system plays a language menu (212), stores the customer's language choice at the account level for use in subsequent calls (214), and uses the language selected by the customer for further call processing (216). The ability to change the language associated with a particular PIN/account is provided as part of the services available within the prepaid system.

To determine which language is played for the PIN prompt, the algorithm illustrated in Figure 5 may be used. The prepaid system first determines whether the First Time Only Language option is enabled (300). If it is, the system uses the DNIS language (302, 304), the program default language (306, 308), or the product default language (310, 312), in that order depending on what was defined during the system configuration.

If the First Time Only Language option has not been enabled, the system uses the DNIS language for the PIN prompt if a DNIS language has been defined (314,316). If no DNIS language has been defined, but multiple languages have been for language menus at either the program or product level (318), the prepaid system plays the language menu to the customer (320) and uses the selected language for the subsequent call processing (322). If only a single language is defined at the program or product level, the system uses this language to process the call (324,326). Finally, if none of the above language paths have been defined, the system will default for further call processing to an error language defined at the routing level (328).

While preferred embodiments of the present invention have been described, it is to be understood that the embodiments described are illustrative only and the scope of the invention is to be defined solely by the appended claims when accorded a full range of equivalence, many variations and modifications naturally occurring to those of skill in the art from a perusal hereof.